by Stuart, Anne
She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, waiting. She heard him skirt the pile of wood, felt him approach her, but she refused to look at him. She was ready. But she no longer wanted to look into his eyes when he killed her.
He was close enough that she could hear his tense breathing, feel his body heat, but he didn’t touch her. The tension spun out until she couldn’t bear it anymore, and she opened her eyes, staring up at him. “Go ahead,” she said fiercely. “Do it.”
He raised his hand, and there was no knife in it. He reached out for her, and she could see the tension in him. “I want to hurt you,” he said, in a low, bitter voice. “I want to slam you against the wall and beat some sense into you.” He touched her then, her neck, and his hand was warm and gentle despite his fury. “Damn you, Lizzie.” He sank against her, pushing her against the wall, and she could feel his body shake.
Her arms came up around him instinctively. This was no killer. This was no monster. This was the man she loved. “Damien,” she said in a broken voice. “I’m so sorry.” And she kissed him, her mouth finding his blindly, reveling as he kissed her back with a tightly leashed fury at war with the fierce desire that flared between them.
And then he stiffened in her arms, as if an electric shock had gone through him. “Lizzie,” he gasped against her mouth.
Adamson’s voice came out of the gathering gloom. “Move away from him, Lizzie.”
She clutched at him, and she felt the dampness on his back as he collapsed against her, breathing in short, strangled rasps. “Damien!” she cried.
“Get away from him, Lizzie,” Adamson said. “He’s a killer. He’d gut you as soon as look at you. You know what he has in his car? Knives. A collection of knives. Oh, and there’s a mask there. One of the little girl who looks like you. Get away from him, Lizzie, before he kills you.”
“Lizzie,” Damien breathed in her ear, “run.” And then he began to sink, collapsing at her feet, and all her strength couldn’t keep him upright.
Her hands were red and slippery with blood. Damien’s blood. “What did you do?” she screamed at Adamson. “You’re wrong. He wouldn’t hurt me.”
“No,” Adamson said kindly. “But I will.” He started toward her, and she saw him raise the bloody knife in his hand, the one he’d already thrust into Damien’s back.
But Saucy Jack, Springheeled Jack, Jack the Ripper, misjudged his distance. Lizzie spun around, and the knife slashed down beside her, ripping through her sleeve, tearing into her arm and not her chest, as she ran, leaping over the upended counters, fleet and graceful, unhampered by long skirts and corsets. He was after her. She could hear him, but she didn’t look back, racing along the pitted and scarred platform, away from the building, away from certain death.
She raced across the old railroad ties, and her foot caught, sending her sprawling. She glanced back as she scrambled to her feet, and he was looming up behind her. His top hat had been lost in the scuffle, and his red-lined cape must have fallen off, but she knew his face, knew it from the last time.
He was screaming at her, words she didn’t recognize, and the sounds were horrible, changing from a young boy’s cry to a woman’s venomous shriek to an old hag’s cackle, as he came after her, faster than she would have thought possible.
She didn’t know how long she could keep running. Sooner or later he would catch her, sooner or later she would die, as Damien had died, and her only consolation would be that they’d died together. Perhaps they would have one more chance, in some other lifetime.
He was gaining on her. She could see the vague outline of an abandoned truck and she headed for that, hearing him closing in behind her, knowing she would be too late. She’d just reached the rusted hulk when his hand came down on her shoulder, spinning her around, and she looked up into the face of death.
He pulled his hand away from her in horror, as if the touch of her flesh had burned him. “No,” he said, in a choked voice. “No. You’re the wrong one. Where’s Lizzie?”
She thought she could see another shadow on the landscape, moving toward them, but Adamson was too intent to notice. The knife in his hand was huge, glistening wetly with Damien’s blood, and it would end her life with one slash.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not Lizzie. I know you. You’re Mary. Mary Kelly. I don’t need you. I already finished with you, centuries ago,” he said in a lost voice. “I need Lizzie. Long Liz Stride. They interrupted me, and I never finished. I need to finish. I need to make everything right and proper. I don’t even have my mask with me. Damien surprised me, showing up like that. I have to have the mask, you know. Made by Liz Stride’s own hands. It’s not me, you see,” he said confidingly, his tone cozy and horrifying. “He comes and takes over, and I have to wear a mask, just until I find Lizzie Stride. And then I’ll be finished, and there’ll be no more need for masks. You understand that, don’t you, Mary? Tell me where Lizzie is and I promise I won’t harm you again.”
The cold of the desert night bit into her bones. Overhead the stars were bright, and the Santa Ana winds blew through her hair, tossing it in her face.
“Lizzie’s gone,” she said. “Gone where you can’t find her. You’ll never hurt her, Adamson.”
He stared at her, mute frustration creasing his friendly face. And then he smiled, a ghastly, cheerful smile. “Call me Jack,” he said. “And I guess you’ll have to do.”
The figure came out of the darkness, releasing a wild cry, leaping onto Adamson like a jaguar. They went down in a welter of blood and limbs, and the sound that came from their tangled figures was horrifying, a long, low howl that sounded like death.
The top figure staggered away, falling to his knees in the sand, and it was Damien, winded, bleeding, swaying slightly as he stared at Adamson’s writhing figure.
“Don’t go near him,” he said, in a strangled rasp as Lizzie moved, but she had no intention of going toward the dying man. Instead, she sank to her knees beside Damien and put her arms around him, feeling the wet slickness of the blood at his back, the painful shudder of his breathing.
The dark figure rolled over and lay there for a moment in the cape of red she’d thought he’d lost. And then Lizzie realized it wasn’t a red cape, it was his life’s blood flowing out, covering the desert floor. His own knife was embedded in his stomach, and he’d managed to disembowel himself as he’d thrashed around on the blade.
Damien staggered to his feet, keeping an arm around Lizzie, and he moved closer, staring down at the dying man. Adamson’s eyes were glazing over, his mouth twisted in a grimace. “It’s over,” Adamson said, his voice the sigh of death. “This time.” And then he lay utterly still, as the last of his blood soaked into the sand beneath him.
Lizzie didn’t think she could move, but Damien drew her closer. “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered, his voice raw with pain.
She managed to stir herself. “We have to get you to a doctor.”
“No doctor. I’ll be okay. You can take care of it.”
“But, Damien, we have to tell someone.”
He caught her face, staring down at her, and through the glaze of pain he shook his head. “No one will believe us,” he said. “Hell, I don’t believe it. No one will solve this Ripper case, any more than they did the original one.”
“They’ll have questions. They’ll find his body.”
“There are coyotes around here. There won’t be any trace of him by morning. They’ll even drag the bones away.”
“Damien . . .”
“Lizzie,” he said. “If they ask us, we’ll tell them what we can. But no one’s going to ask us. They’ll be busy trying to find a trace of Adamson, but the police are a close-knit bunch. If they suspect anything, and sooner or later they’re going to have to, they’ll cover it up. It’s over, Lizzie. No one will ever kn
ow who committed these murders, any more than they knew who stalked the streets of London almost a hundred and fifty years ago.”
“It was the Chief Inspector in charge of the investigation,” Lizzie said in a quiet voice. “I saw him,” she said flatly. “I remember.”
He didn’t say a word. “Let’s go away, Lizzie,” he said, holding her close. “Far, far away from here. Let’s go someplace where you can make masks and I can write. Where it isn’t dark all the time. Let’s run away and live this life happily ever after.” He brushed a kiss against her mouth. “I love you, Lizzie.”
She put her hands on his face, his dear, dark face. Her hands were stained with his blood, but it didn’t seem to matter. It simply sealed their fate.
“This time,” she said, “we will.”
Epilogue
THE MOUNTAINS were high and snowy, sharp-peaked, with clean, biting air. The house was low and rambling and very cozy, with wood heat and huge windows to let in the countryside, fresh spring water and power from their own stream. There was no darkness there, and the nights were filled with bright stars lighting their way.
“You’re not,” Lizzie said, staring at her husband.
“l am.”
“You’re going to write a book about reincarnation? Are you certain you want to?”
“It’ll amuse me,” he said, giving her that rare, wonderful smile of his. “Besides, they’re paying me a fortune.”
“You always told me New Age publishing didn’t pay very well,” she said.
“It doesn’t. My book’s debunking the myth of reincarnation. It doesn’t exist,” he said, his dark eyes alight with amusement.
She just looked at him for a moment. It had been a strange and wonderful year, up in the mountains of New Mexico, away from cities and questions and death. Adamson’s body had never been recovered, and it was assumed he’d been the Ripper’s final victim. They hadn’t closed the case on the Venice Ripper, and probably never would. No one really thought they’d find the answer, but at least the killings had stopped.
She made masks once more, with no fear of death haunting her, and Damien wrote articles for the Chronicle, refusing their increasingly lucrative offers to return to the city. Life was clean and simple and very good up here, with good friends and a baby growing in her belly.
“It doesn’t exist, huh?” she said, moving closer, leaning against him, and he reached and put his hand across the swelling warmth of their child.
“Nope,” he said. “There are no such things as past lives.”
“And no such things as second chances?” she murmured.
He tugged her down and kissed her. “I’ll convince a large section of the reading public of that,” he said.
“You’re a swine, James Killian,” she said.
“So I am, Mary Kelly.” He rubbed her belly. “Just don’t tell our daughter that when she’s born.”
“Don’t worry, love,” she said, kissing the top of his head. “Courtland will always think her father’s perfect.” She leaned down and placed her mouth against his, in a kiss of warmth and peace.
Their long night of darkness was gone forever.
The End
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About the Author
ANNE STUART recently celebrated her forty years as a published author. She has won every major award in the romance field and appeared on the bestseller list of the NY Times, Publisher’s Weekly, and USA Today, as well as being featured in Vogue, People Magazine, and Entertainment Tonight. Anne lives by a lake in the hills of Northern Vermont with her fabulous husband.